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In our virtual worlds, there is a small, vibrant nation of 7 million people called Foursquare – it’s actually an app that can be uploaded on your mobile or your computer but is a buzzing hive of human activity. Everybody seems to live on Foursquare nowadays.

It is a location based social networking website created in 2009 by Naveen Selvadurai and Dennis Crowley to help people to check in through their mobile devices with their friends in different locations where the action is.

This innovative app which brings people and businesses together in a win-win situation was recognized as a Technology Pioneer for 2011 by the World Economic Forum.

Imagine a room full of women, prostitutes, lowest of the low. They are faceless – without an identity, without a future. They are created out of found objects, the flotsam and jetsam of society.
Their heads are fashioned out of jars, their breasts are jars shaped like voluptuous melons– after all, aren’t women objects? They lack hands, and some even their lower limbs, they have no standing in society. Clad in flashy underwear and gold heels, they are what they wear, sexual objects in an uncaring society.
And yet to stand in that small room with these life-sized, lifeless women was to feel their presence and their pain. It seemed almost a community. Iranian artist Shirin Fakim’s women were just one vignette of the recent Asian Contemporary Art Week (ACAW)

“Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Friendster have definitely made the world a smaller place but they’ve also made it more open for everyone to peek into our lives. Today we are defined by the number of friends we have on FB, by how many people follow us on Twitter, and how many people subscribe to our blog, rather than by the number of true friends that we can sit with and have a cup of chai.” GUEST BLOG

The only job he ever applied for was at McDonalds – and he was turned down! He is a high school dropout who at the age of 16 went on to create ClickAgent, an Internet business which sold for $ 40 million.

He sold his next start-up, BlueLithium, to Yahoo for a whopping $ 300 million. Now he’s on to his third start-up, RadiumOne, and is having the time of his life.

Meet Gurbaksh Chahal, the kid from Tarn Taran, near Amritsar, who has gone on to become a major serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. He has been on Oprah before millions of viewers and has written a best selling book. Worth over $100 million, he’s got the fabulous penthouse and the Lamborghini and all the perks. He was proclaimed as the most Eligible Bachelor in America in 2009. Now, at 28, he’s still single!

Last year Vikas Reddy and co-founder Jeff Powers of Occipital, a start-up in Boulder, Co, were listed in the 30 under 30 – America’s Coolest Entrepreneurs by Inc. Magazine.

Vikas and Jeff came up with an innovative price checker called RedLaser, a free scanning application for iPhone and Android that has been downloaded over 8 million times. They sold RedLaser to eBay for an undisclosed amount, and now are creating and fine-tuning 360 Panorama, an exciting new product which enables computers to see like the human eye.

At 21, Rahim Fazal was the youngest CEO ever to head a publicly traded company. He was the celebrity entrepreneur whose face was splashed in newspapers and who at 16 had already sold another company for $1.5 million. But within a year his new company was in trouble, and he had to walk away from it – to study in a community college since he had hardly finished high school. Talk about ups and downs!

Rahim, who was named amongst America’s top 30 entrepreneurs under 30 by Inc. magazine and amongst the top 25 digital thought leaders by iMedia, has had enough twists and turns in his life to be worthy of a Hollywood – or Bollywood – movie!

In the city of reinvention, what better way to stand out from the crowd than to reinvent yourself?
As the film festivals focusing on South Asian films have multiplied in the Big Apple, the oldest and most noted showcase of them all, the MIACC Film Festival, is now known as New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) and is focusing on independent and regional films, while still being open to Bollywood blockbusters. The opening film ‘Do Dooni Chaar’ is a Disney film with Bollywood stars but imbued with the indie spirit.

In our virtual world anyone can become an instant expert on any city – thanks to MyCityWay, an innovative mobile app designed by the team of Archana Patchirajan, Puneet Mehta and Sonpreet Bhatia, three immigrants from India who’ve made New York home and achieved the American Dream.

MyCityWay just raised $ 5 million in financing from BMW i Ventures, FirstMark Capital and IA Ventures and you may see this app in BMW cars in the future. This little app, which can be downloaded free on your mobile and offers you a comprehensive grid of the city, is currently available in 40 cities and the plan is to bring it to 40 more.

Do you think it’s still possible to dream big and actually see that dream become a reality? Ask first-time filmmaker Nayan Padrai. His project ‘When Harry Tries to Marry’ – made on hope, persistence and a limited budget has gone on to bag several top awards at the recent London Asian Film Festival: Best Crossover Film and the Audience Award for Best Film. Rahul Rai, the young actor who’s never acted before, was named Best New Talent.
The film has already shown at the Austin and Mumbai Film Festivals, and its script was a featured project at the Sundance Institute Independent Producers’ Conference. It’s now showing in New York.

In a world where the computer is king, the Internet is all-powerful and Facebook and Twitter reign, social media is the newest and hottest turf to be conquered.

For each of these innovative entrepreneurs, who are in their 20’s and 30’s, the world to be conquered is virtual but the treasures to be won are very real – millions of dollars for successful start-ups, fame, fortune and fans globally.

Meet the creators of five start-ups everyone is buzzing about – Foursquare, Involver, MyCityWay, Occipital and Radium One. In our increasingly interconnected world where Mumbai and Manhattan are just a click away, you will soon be using their creations if you are not already…

Dhukia, a poor untouchable, journeys to the home of Ghashiram, the village brahmin, to request him to set an auspicious date for his daughter’s wedding. He is made to wait, told to clean the stables and chop wood. The hapless man, burdened by caste and class, malnourished and starving, labors in silence – finally dying in the scorching sun. For Ghashiram, the death is an inconvenience; the dilemma is how to get rid of the corpse of an untouchable man…

“Deliverance’ (Satgadi) is a powerful short film by Satyajit Ray based on a short story by Munshi Premchand. This stark film underlines the brutishness of life, the inhumanity of man to man, and is one you won’t forget in a hurry.

New Yorkers got to see this film in the recent film series – Long Shadows: the Late Work of Satyajit Ray, at the Walter Reade Theater, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

(Photo: Amal Biswas)

Ever wondered why Hindu Gods and Goddesses have multiple heads, limbs and eyes?

Word as a vehicle of expression of thought is a powerful instrument – but its adequacy is limited to the phenomenal world. That is why an individual’s personal spiritual realization is inexpressible in its totality.

Mythology is an offshoot of this inefficacy of word while dealing with celestial events. The saintly scholar in Hinduism is seized with the problem of adequately narrating a superhuman extraordinary event, and tends to exaggerate. He needs to respond to his inner clamor to bestow the highest glory to the Lord with love, respect and adoration.

This has inevitably resulted in the Hindu pantheon having Gods and Goddesses with multiple heads and hands, but then so do cosmic evil forces too. There is a deep philosophical significance in this.
– Guest blogger Tapas Mukherjee

It is a film which touches you and makes you think and realize that there are always two sides to a story. Julian Schnabel’s ‘Miral’ was bound to cause controversy because the noted Jewish director shows the world from the perspective of a young Palestinian girl in occupied East Jerusalem, something which has rarely been done. This blistering film is based on an autobiographical book of the same name by Rula Jebreal, who grew up in the occupied territory and is now a journalist in Italy but has never forgotten the traumas of her scarred land.

“My blogs usually are about trips to exciting and exotic international destinations, and these trips typically last about two weeks or so. Today I’m writing about a very different journey – my journey on the path of meditation that I have been on for about three years. When I set off on that trip, I didn’t even know that I was embarking on a journey.

I started learning meditation out of exasperation. My sister had been insisting that I attend a course with Art of Living (AOL) because it would help me. I was quite sure I didn’t need help. My experience growing up in India and then living in the US for several years was that this stuff was either for the ultra-religious Indians or new age Americans. I was neither. But I took the course anyway – so I could turn around and let my sister know that it was no good and a waste of money!” Guest Blogger Jinny Uppal

I-Phone, I-Pad, I-Meditate?

It was bound to happen! The practice of meditation may be thousands of years old but it is perfectly suited to our very stressful modern times, when in order to go fast, you have to learn to slow down. And the buzz of the moment is that the power of social media is being harnessed by a group of high achieving young professionals to get the word out about the value of meditation, and the upcoming I Meditate NY event, one of the largest meditation gatherings ever to be held in the Big Apple.

Over 2700 New Yorkers, from all walks of life and all religions, will come together to listen to and meditate with the renowned spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who heads the Art of Living Foundation, with music by Grammy nominated Chandrika Tandon and world music band Bhakti. This unique event will be held at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall on April 10, and leading up to it are free meditation classes at the Art of Living Center in Manhattan, a chance to get a first-hand taste of meditation.

” Phew – Welcome to India, the land of colors, exaggeration, opportunism and couch patriotism.

I witnessed India’s second World Cup Cricket win last night very differently from the way I had done in 1983. In 1983, I was a kid who had fallen asleep out of exhaustion, in the middle of the night, in the living room of neighbors who were the proud owners of the only coveted Sony color TV in our whole apartment building.

Last night, 3/4ths of a Johnny Walker Black Label could not knock me out as I sat, eagle-eyed in front of my TV set. Biting my nails in anticipation, whistling in glee, trying to add my bit to my nation’s couch potato-ism, I gratefully witnessed that Midas Dhoni was up to his pranks yet again, and was steering his wobbly ship home yet again, as he has been doing for a number of times in the past five years.”
Guest Blogger Ayon Banerjee.

Great news for Anoop Desai fans – they are going to get not one but three albums from him this year, as part of the Zero trilogy. Songs like ‘Worth the Wait’, ‘Want your Love’ and ‘OoWee’ can be downloaded for free – in fact the entire ‘Zero.O ‘ can be downloaded. The light-hearted ‘OoWee’ is just the right number to hear now – fun and very danceable, it makes you think of Spring. And Anoop is giving away the album – so here’s a chance to download it and also watch his new music video. Also learn how you can support the efforts of this independent artiste who does not have a big label behind him.

If you want to see Padma Lakshmi break into a smile, all you have to do is ask her about her little girl, Krishna. “She’s wonderful, she’s healthy!” she beams. “We went to the zoo today – it was such a beautiful day! She’s the light of my life and I am very thankful to have her!”

She adds, “And I might not have had her if it wasn’t for the fact that I was diagnosed by Dr. Tamer Seckin and I got the help I needed. I can’t stress that enough – I was told that I wouldn’t be able to have a baby and the fact that I have her is a gift of God and this is just my way of saying thank you.”

‘This’ was the Blossom Ball at the New York Public Library to raise awareness and funds for the Endometriosis Foundation of America, and Padma Lakshmi, who is the co-founder with Dr. Seckin, was on the red carpet at the gala, looking stunning in a Sabyasachi saree.

A precursor to Asian Contemporary Art Week in NY, a recent group show: India and Pakistan may have been geographically birthed on the same subcontinent but they are relentlessly apart as nations. It is a question of so near – and yet so far. Once one people, they are now so far apart that can one understand the mindset of The Other?

Yet, art by Indian and Pakistani artists hung side by side in the Aicon Gallery in Manhattan – perhaps there were not even six degrees of separation between these canvases.

Looking at these powerful works of art one would be hard-pressed to say which artist was from India, and which from Pakistan. This only goes to prove that at heart, the dreams, the hopes and the fears are the same…

“If you punch a concrete wall with your fist, the wall hits you back with the same amount of force you had engaged in hitting it.

Your bad actions in this world will inevitably hit you back too; just as your good actions will ensure good consequences reflected either in ensuring unburdened living, or in ameliorating accumulated bad karma.” New guest blog on spirituality.